The modern electrical grid, through which modern society receives and accesses electrical power, has become so ubiquitous that its context often becomes lost. And that context is, simply, that the modern electrical grid is nothing more than a mechanism by which to transfer power from places where power can be generated to places where power can be conveniently consumed and utilized. But the mere ubiquity of the modern electrical grid does not necessarily mean that it is the most efficient mechanism for transferring power.
Three hundred years ago, early settlers in the Western region of modern-day New York State sought to harness at least some of the power of Niagara Falls. Early attempts to do so were based on the mechanical transmission of power. For example, in the late 1750's, some of the power of Niagara Falls was harnessed to turn waterwheels, which were connected to a sequence of belts, which turned equipment in a local sawmill. Thus, the sequence of belts transferred power, in the form of rotational motion, from the location at which such power was generated, namely by the water turning a waterwheel, to another location where such power could be utilized, namely the sawmill. Needless to say, the transfer of power through a sequence of belts, in the form of rotational motion, comprises inherent limitations in how far such power can be transferred.
To improve upon this power delivery, electrical generators were installed at Niagara Falls in the early 1880's. These electrical generators transferred power in the form of direct current electricity. As will be recognized by those skilled in the art, direct current electricity, much like the sequence of belts, was not able to transfer power for long distances. What was ultimately selected to transfer power from Niagara Falls, where the movement of the water inherently comprises power generation capability, to places where that power could be conveniently utilized, such as the nearby town of Buffalo, N.Y., was alternating current electricity. As is well known to electrical power history buffs, in the mid-1890's, Westinghouse, using Nikola Tesla's invention, installed alternating current electrical generators at Niagara Falls and transmitted power using alternating current electricity. The modern electrical power grid is based on this very same three-phase alternating current that was utilized to deliver power from Niagara Falls to, for example, Buffalo N.Y. Thus, contextually, the modern electrical power grid is nothing more than the most efficient method of delivering power across distances in the 1880's.
As electrical power delivery became ubiquitous, a greater quantity of devices were made available that could convert such electrical power into useful results. For example, an electrical heater can be plugged into the electric power grid and can utilize electrical power received from the grid to generate a useful result, namely heat on a cold day. Were heat the only useful byproduct that could be generated, more efficient power delivery mechanisms could be utilized. For example, many cities and universities in cold climates have a centralized steam power plant that utilizes power-producing raw materials, such as coal or natural gas, and then delivers the power derived from those raw materials in the form of heat, transported via steam in steam pipes running through steam tunnels. Consequently, in such cities and universities, rather than plugging in a heater into the electrical power grid, residents can simply increase the amount of steam flowing through a steam radiator. In both instances, power was transmitted from a power generation facility to a consumer of power that utilized that power to warm their living space. In the first example, the power was generated at an electrical power plant and then transmitted in the form of electrical power, through the electrical power grid, to a user that utilized a device, namely an electrical heater, to generate a useful result, namely heat. In the second example, the power was generated at a steam power plant and then transmitted in the form of heat power, or steam power, through the network of steam pipes in steam tunnels, to a user that utilized the device, namely a steam powered heater, to generate a useful result, namely heat.
Of course, the modern electrical power grid can provide power for many other types of electrical devices, beyond simply electrical heaters, that can generate other types of useful results. For example, electrically powered entertainment devices provide audio/visual entertainment, electrically powered lamps provide light, electrically powered shavers provide hair trimming, and so on. In each case, the power obtained from power-generation-capable raw materials was transmitted, via the electrical power grid, and utilized to generate a useful result.
Increasingly, one useful result generated by electrically-powered devices is the processing of digital data by electrically-powered computing devices. Personal computing devices are electrically powered because, at the time that personal computing devices were initially developed, and still to this day, alternating current electricity represents the most ubiquitous form of power distribution. The circuitry inside a personal computing device, and, indeed, in enterprise computing devices as well, such as server computing devices, natively operates on direct current electricity. As will be recognized by those skilled in the art, power supplies convert alternating current electricity that is provided by the electrical power grid into the direct current electricity that can be consumed by the circuitry inside of a computing device that actually performs the digital data processing.
Because digital data communications over short distances were substantially faster than those over long distances, the processing of digital data was typically performed at the location where the digital data was created, and ultimately consumed by the user of a computing device. Thus, for example, traditionally, the processing of digital data performed by individual users utilizing personal computing devices was performed by those personal computing devices themselves, which were co-located with the user. Similarly, as another example, traditionally, the processing of digital data performed by enterprise users utilizing enterprise computing devices, such as server computing devices, was performed by those server computing devices themselves which were located in one or more of the facilities that also housed the enterprise.
As computer network communications have increased in efficiency and bandwidth, it has become more practical to perform digital data processing at a location remote from the location where such data is initially generated, and where the processed data will be consumed. For example, a user can upload a digital photograph to a server and then cause the server to process the digital photograph, changing its colors and applying other visual edits to it. In such an example, of the digital processing that is being performed is being performed by a device that is remote from the user. Indeed, in such an example, if the user was utilizing a battery-operated computing device to interact with the server such as, for example, a laptop or smartphone, the user could be in a location that was not receiving any electrical power at all. Instead, electrical power can have been delivered to the server, which is remote from the user, and the server can have utilized electrical power to process the data provided by the user and then return the processed data to the user. In such an example, the user was able to perform processing on digital data without receiving any electrical power and instead, receiving, only the result of the work performed by electrical power, namely the processed data that was performed by the server computing device that has consumed electrical power that was delivered to the location where the server was located.
As will be recognized by those skilled in the art, such remote data processing is increasingly performed by collections of computing devices that are commonly referred to as a “data center”. Efficient network communications enable individual users, and enterprises, to transmit data to such data centers, where the data can be stored, processed, and otherwise operated upon by the computing devices in the data center. Individual users and enterprises can then retrieve processed data from the data centers when needed. As will also be recognized by those skilled in the art, modern data centers consume a large amount of electrical power such that the cost of the electrical power consumed by the data center becomes a major, if not the primary, component in determining a data center's fiscal viability.